Skyrim on Switch is Everything You Hoped it Would Be

It's Skyrim. On the Switch.

By
Zachary Ryan

Nintendo’s behind-closed-doors appointments at PAX West always happen in the same tiny room. Well above the bustling show floor, down a very clinical hallway, tucked behind a door that simply reads “Nintendo”, we get to spend about an hour here each year, and get a sneak peek at the Nintendo games that are just over the horizon.

This year, we waited in that beige hallway for an extra 10 minutes before we were allowed entry. Our Nintendo rep opened the door just enough to pop his head out.

“Give us a minute,” he said, “Skyrim is broken.”

There it was. All my fears for this game realized in a brief update. You see, I love Skyrim. Like, 300+ hours, multiple completions, different character classes on different systems, love it. And I love my Nintendo Switch, but since Skyrim was announced for Switch, I’ve been perplexed. How? How could I take this entire sprawling kingdom with me in my back pocket?

As it turns out, I can do it with relative ease. Skryim on Nintendo Switch is all the snowy mountain peaks and necromancer packed dungeons you’ve come to know and love, crammed into a tiny Switch cartridge.

My demo dropped me into the forests outside of Riverwood, just after the tutorial area. Rather than invest too much time into working my way through the initial main story quests, I decided to do what I do best in Skyrim and just wander.

Striking out across the river, I headed west, away from the mountains and into countryside. There, I encountered the following:

A fortress with some bandits. Burnt them up.

An old lady who said she was a “simple old woman” but was actually a sorceress. Chopped her pretty good.

A cave full of murderous skeletons and an evil Ice Mage. Took an arrow or two to the knee, but eventually prevailed.

You know, Skyrim stuff.

I’m sure that saying that Skyrim on Switch feels just like Skyrim sounds like I’m being reductive, but it’s actually genuine praise. The game runs well, with a smooth framerate and generally crisp textures, and even the historically epic load times seemed shorter. But what’s more impressive is undocking the game and playing in handheld mode.

Skyrim really pops on the Switch’s screen, and the novelty of taking its massive world on the go is sort of incredible. When it first launched back in 2011, the idea of putting Skyrim on a portable device seemed laughable, but it makes a lot of sense on Switch.

New to this version is amiibo functionality. Players can use amiibo to randomly generate loot in the form of treasure chests that drop from sky, not unlike in Breath of the Wild. I used the original Link amiibo to summon a chest full of gauntlets and fruit, but was assured by Nintendo that the Link armor from this year’s E3 demo was in the game and is pretty common in loot drops. So, for those of you looking to play this version of Skyrim as a gritty Zelda reboot, it shouldn’t prove too difficult. Motion controls are also added to this version and while aiming a bow and arrow works well enough, flicking your wrists to perform different melee attacks felt clunky and unnecessary.

Between Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and this winter’s Xenoblade Chronicles 2, RPG fans have plenty of sprawling, open worlds to explore on the Nintendo Switch.

Zachary Ryan is a Senior Features Producer at IGN. Follow him on Twitter if you want to learn more about burritos.